Unusual Cooking Lessons
by Spring Zephyr
Summary: Bianchi teaches Gokudera how to cook. "I don't need cooking lessons," Gokudera huffed, snapping a pair of heavy duty safety goggles over his eyes.


"I don't need cooking lessons," Gokudera huffed, snapping a pair of heavy duty safety goggles over his eyes.

Bianchi was already wearing hers. "After you almost burned down her kitchen? Nana disagrees."

"Whatever. Tsuna's mom wouldn't notice such a tiny house fire."

"She asked me, personally, to be your instructor."

"That explains everything."

"As the best chef in the house, and seeing as your my little brother, I agreed that there was no one more personally suited to oversee your training than myself."

"This was your idea!"

"Now, let's begin."

There was an array of knives and a cutting board already sitting on the counter. Bianchi was reaching for the same box of surgical gloves as Gokudera, which was next to the flamethrower Gokudera used when the stove was taking too long to boil water. His sister had added a couple things of her own – a gardening spade, some wire cutters, a can of compressed air, and a pair of clawed knuckle dusters – that he reluctantly admitted were pure genius. Gokudera could see a practical use in all of those things.

And on the other counter was a well-used cooking book, which Gokudera assumed they were only sort of going to follow. Cooking was supposed to be an art, right?

"What do you suppose the most important aspect of cooking is?" Bianchi asked.

"The ingredients."

"More specific."

Gokudera scowled. "Of course it's ingredients. _Pork_ ramen, _blueberry_ muffins – _everyone_ knows that."

"I assure you," Bianchi replied, "that the answer is not pork or blueberries."

His frowned grew a little deeper while he thought, dragging his brain over the rack to come up with an answer Bianchi would approve of. "The technique?"

"Why do you sound uncertain?"

"It's gotta be the technique."

"Wrong," Bianchi replied coolly.

This was infuriating. Gokudera appreciated the textbook approach to most things, but wasn't cooking something of an exception? He'd already tried studying gastronomy and the chemical relationship between ingredients, and that had resulted in almost burning down the Tenth's kitchen.

"I give up," Gokudera conceded finally.

"It's love."

"It's..."

"Love," Bianchi repeated.

He really should have guessed that.

"Or hatred, depending on who you're cooking for." She shrugged, as though everything she touched didn't turn out poisonous regardless. "We'll be focusing on love today, so think of someone you care about."

"This is – "

"Culinary brilliance?" Bianchi interrupted. "I know."

" – something I don't have a choice about, do I?"

Bianchi smiled, which told him everything he needed to know. He sighed, and got to thinking.

There were a lot of people he loved. Tenth, Bianchi… Hell, he even liked that stupid baseball freak more than he let on, and would dynamite whoever spilled if word ever got out. There wasn't a single person in the Vongola family he hated. Lambo had some good points, when he wasn't crying and getting snot everywhere. Ryohei was decent enough, for a Lawn-head with muscles where there was supposed to be a brain. Even the Varia, despite being batshit insane, were nice enough once you got to know them.

"Have you thought of anyone yet?"

"No!"  
"It shouldn't be taking this long."

"Chrome," Gokudera snapped stubbornly, and then mentally kicked himself for picking the girl with no organs. "Haru?"

Bianchi offered him a thin smile. "Why not add Kyoko to the list? I'm sure the girls would like to know you appreciate them."

"That's..." Maybe it would be better to save Tenth until he'd improved his culinary skills. Which wasn't to say he didn't love the girls just as much, collectively, just – he wouldn't be quite as sad if something went horribly wrong. "Is it too late to change my answer?"

Because if something was about to go horribly wrong, he'd rather risk Ryohei or Yamato than put the girls in danger. They were dumber and probably incapable of dying. He'd never seen either of them catch a cold before.

"Yes," Bianchi replied. "I already have the perfect recipe in mind. The girls all like sweet things, so let's make a variation of Italian rigatoni and sausage with romano cheese."

That sounded like one of his mother's old recipes. He wondered if Bianchi knew that.

"Wouldn't it be better to make a cake?"

"That's baking. We're learning cooking right now."

She asked him to boil some water. Gokudera responded by looking at the flamethrower longingly, waiting for permission to use it. Instead, she showed him how to bring the water to a faster boil by adding salt.

"If you put the lid on, it will trap heat inside the pot and bring the water to a boil even faster," Bianchi explained. "The use of flamethrowers and similar techniques are reserved for advanced chefs only."

"That makes sense," Gokudera admitted.

While Bianchi was looking in the fridge for vegetables, he popped the top off Nana's salt shaker and dumped the rest of the salt into the pot for an even faster boil. Then he put the lid back on the pot, as Bianchi had earlier. She returned with a bottle of expensive, imported olive oil, a handful of garlic cloves, some butter, onions, broccoli, sausage, and a container of cheese.

"I pre-seasoned the sausage and grated the cheese to save time," she explained further. "For today, I thought it would be best to stick with the very basics."

Holding up the knife with the widest blade, she demonstrated how to chop an onion by avoiding the root until the end, although with both of them wearing goggles it was hard to say if her technique worked or not. The garlic was next, and surprisingly sticky – even though Bianchi showed him a way to remove the peels without getting his gloves sticky, Gokudera didn't quite master it on his first attempt and resorted to smashing them with the spade instead.

"Is the pot supposed to be boiling over?" Gokudera asked a moment later.

He'd thought he'd heard something strange coming from his left, but hadn't realized what it was until he looked.

"It'll be fine."

"But is it supposed to be doing that?"

Bianchi thought about that, then reiterated, "It'll be fine. Did you peel the garlic and throw away the peels?"

He glanced at the smashed mess on the counter. It was hard to tell which parts were garlic and which were peels, but there were only enough peels to cover the surface area of each glove, meaning it was safe to assume at least 2/3 of that pile was actual garlic.

"Yep," he replied. "Chopped it too."

"Good job, Hayato!"

Cooking probably wasn't Gokudera's "thing", because every time Bianchi had her back turned Gokudera looked for ways to make the process faster. Bianchi melted the butter, and he cranked up the heat on the sausage. He tried to melt the cheese for the sauce in the pot he was cooking rigatoni in. Cooking vegetables individually took too long, and he'd read that decreased their nutritional value anyway, so he tossed them in the microwave for forty seconds and called that "good enough".

"Why did the microwave just go off?" Bianchi asked.

"Made myself a snack," Gokudera lied with a shrug.

"We're almost done. The only thing left is to put everything together and plate it. Would you like a taste test, Hayato?"

Gokudera glanced at the rigatoni, which was… suddenly fuming and purple?!

Suddenly, there was a sharp pang in his stomach. Like someone had whacked him in the gut with that spade, as revenge for the mashed up garlic from earlier. He swore he'd never use wire cutters to cut broccoli again.

"Did I do this?" he asked numbly.

"No," Bianchi replied. "We did this."

She sounded proud of herself. Meanwhile, Gokudera stared at his hands and wondered if he could use Poison Cooking too or if Bianchi's presence was just that powerful.

He would throw this dish out later. When she wasn't looking.

Maybe he'd even attempt to make his mother's rigatoni again, properly, so he could still have something to share with the girls. Or Tenth, if it turned out well enough.

"Do you feel like you've learned anything?" Bianchi asked.

"Yeah… that our cooking talent might be genetic and our family is terrifying..."

"Excellent," Bianchi smiled again. "And sorry to leave so soon, Hayato, but I have another cooking lesson planned. Hibari asked me to teach him love-infused cooking next."  
She left before Gokudera could ask any more questions.

**I didn't get to use the "cook book as an impromptu cooking utensil" idea, because this is something I wrote quickly and with very little planning. Maybe in a hypothetical sequel.**


End file.
